


The First Three Lives of Ignis Scientia

by Anonymous



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Abduction, Bestiality, Blood and Violence, Body Horror, Comes Back Wrong, Dehumanization, Gen, Miscarriage, Mutilation, Permanent Injury, Rape/Non-con Elements, Resurrection, Torture, hurt little comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 19:00:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17330597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: "I did what I had to." Noct looked over his shoulder long enough for Ignis to see the frown on his face. "You would've done the same, if it was me. You would've—you would've done more for me. I know you would.""Noct, I—""I'm not sorry," Noct interrupted him. He was turning back around, taking long strides toward the bed. "I'm not, no matter what—" He cut himself off, gesturing toward the bedroom door and, presumedly, to whomever was waiting beyond it. There was something ominous in that, in the slow realization that whatever Noct had done to bring Ignis back, the others thought Noct should be sorry for it.Ignis's stomach turned queasily, and he couldn't stop himself from thinking of the prices paid in fairytales. He wasn't much, but even his life couldn't have come cheaply. What did Noct give up—what did Noctpay—to bring him back?"What did you do?"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saisei](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saisei/gifts).



> Happy Holidays, Sei! I hope this is enough whump to start your new year off right! ♥
> 
> The last three chapters will be up in a day or two. I hope the prolonged whump isn't too much.

Noct didn’t hear the sound of Ignis’s body hitting the ground, but he can imagine it: the wet thud as Ignis met the pavement, his bones breaking and his body bursting open.

He’s all there, more or less, but he’s—he’s spread out, his brains splattered across the pavement, his intestines spilled out of his belly. There’s blood everywhere, a spray that looks obscenely wide. The smaller sprays—the specks and drips yards away from Ignis’s body—are already drying to a rust-brown. 

“Noct,” Prompto says behind him, and Noct feels himself sway forward then back, like he’s still standing at the top of the Citadel. 

“Is it—that’s all of him, right?”

“Noct,” Prompto says again, and Noct shakes himself free of Prompto’s hand, moving closer. The blood is sticky beneath his boots, and he traces it back to Ignis’s head—his lopsided skull and the blood that is thick and drippy over his broken face.

He’s done this before—did it ten years ago, when Ignis was turning to ash beneath Noct’s hands. He had the crystal then, and he has the crystal now, only a couple hundred yards away, up in the throne room. As long as he has _Ignis_ , he can put him back together again, like pouring water into ash to make a paste, or like melting down gold to piece back the porcelain-shattered bones of Ignis’s body.

“C’mon, man, he’s already—Noct, he’s already gone.”

Ignis’s skin is still warm, and Noct wraps his fingers around his wrist. There’s blood on the underside of Ignis’s hand, where it was resting against the pavement, but it’s whole and unbroken; it’s Ignis, and Noct rests on that, on the certainty that this is what all of Ignis should be like—warm and whole and unbroken. Alive, like a cat that’s landed on its feet after a stupid fall.

 _For three he plays and three he strays, but for the last three he stays,_ Juliette had told him when he was little, when she used to read out of the big book of fairy stories. _That’s why cats—_

Noct tightens his hand around Ignis’s wrist, and he reaches for the crystal and _pulls_.

x

When Ignis woke up, it was after the dawn. 

The light was blinding, and Ignis winced away from it, shading his eyes so that they had a chance to adjust. His head felt fuzzy, like he was waking from a too-long nap, and when he breathed in, the overpowering smell of dust and disinfectant made his head begin to ache. He was still shading his eyes, wincing, when he heard someone breathe in loudly.

“Specs.”

“Noct,” Ignis answered, unwilling to lower his hand. The room was so bright, and he wondered how he’d forgotten how bright the sun could be. Even with his hand cupped over his eyes, he was still squinting, his eyes aching from the amount of light. “The light—the window, could you?”

Noct breathed in shakily, the sound still louder than Ignis would’ve expected, and when he rose from where he must’ve been sitting by Ignis’s bed, the legs of the chair squealed against the wood of the floor. Ignis flinched, hissing sharply at the growing ache in his head, the strange, heavy feeling that was spreading across the top of his skull. Even his face felt heavy; the muscles in his cheeks were sore and tired, and the tongue in his mouth was clumsy and unwieldy around his teeth.

“Shit,” Noct said, marginally softer than before; his voice sounded like it was coming from near the foot of Ignis’s bed now, so he likely was on his way to draw the drapes at the window. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—did it hurt? Your ears?”

“My head,” Ignis corrected, trying to gentle his tone, to drain the pain from it. “It’s fine, Noct, just a headache. Did I—I must’ve hit my head.”

There was a silence at that, long and conspicuous, and the _shuff_ of the drapes being pulled over the window seemed loud in comparison; Noct’s voice, when he spoke again, seemed even louder: “Something like that.”

Well. Something had upset Noct, and it was likely whatever had happened to Ignis; that wouldn’t do, whatever the matter was, and so Ignis would have to set things right. He lowered his hand gingerly, blinking in the dimmed light as he looked over to where Noct was standing by the window. 

"I owe you an apology, Noct," he said. "I didn't mean to cause you worry, and—"

It was a sob that interrupted him, loud and abrupt and distinctly frantic sounding. Ignis couldn't remember the last time he'd seen Noct cry like that—after Tenebrae's fall, perhaps, or during an especially trying time of Noct's adolescence. He could feel himself grow as frantic as Noct sounded, and he struggled upright on the bed, leaning forward as though being three or four inches closer would make a difference. 

"Noct," he said, "I'm fine. Whatever I did was probably foolish, but I'm fine. Look at me, I'm fine—"

"You were dead," Noct spat back. "You weren't fine, you were—you don't know, you didn't see what you looked like. You were—"

The drapes were already closed, but Noct yanked at them again, causing the rings on the rod to clank together sharply. Even from the bed, Ignis could see how tightly Noct was clenching his jaw, the whiteness of his knuckles as he gripped the drapes. Noct's words— _you were dead, you were dead_ —echoed in Ignis's head, clanging against his skull like how pebbles rattled in a metal bucket. He'd never been dead before; he'd been close to it, as close as phoenix downs would allow, but he'd never actually died; he hadn't known there was a way to bring someone back, not after they were wholly dead. He wouldn't have thought there was any way to—

"Noct," he said, but his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again: "Noct, what did you do?"

At first he thought Noct would refuse to answer him; it certainly seemed that way, with how Noct turned more toward the drapes, blatantly avoiding Ignis's eyes. When Noct did answer, it was unexpected; the defensiveness, though, wasn't.

"I did what I had to." Noct looked over his shoulder long enough for Ignis to see the frown on his face. "You would've done the same, if it was me. You would've—you would've done more for me. I know you would."

"Noct, I—"

"I'm not sorry," Noct interrupted him. He was turning back around, taking long strides toward the bed. "I'm not, no matter what—" He cut himself off, gesturing toward the bedroom door and, presumedly, to whomever was waiting beyond it. There was something ominous in that, in the slow realization that whatever Noct had done to bring Ignis back, the others thought Noct should be sorry for it.

Ignis's stomach turned queasily, and he couldn't stop himself from thinking of the prices paid in fairytales. He wasn't much, but even his life couldn't have come cheaply. What did Noct give up—what did Noct _pay_ —to bring him back?

"What did you do?"

Noct was only a few feet away from the bed, close enough that Ignis thought he could see red puffiness around Noct's eyes, even with how dim the room was. He even thought, for a short moment, that he could smell the sour scent of Noct's sweat.

"The crystal was already mostly broken. It's not like I could've used it for anything else." The sour smell of sweat was growing stronger as Noct said, "Besides, I needed you more, and I'm not sorry.

"I won't apologize," he said, looking at Ignis. "Not even to you."

x

The story Noct told him sounded like a fairytale. The way Noct told it felt like a horror story.

"Juliette—she was my governess," Noct explained like he and Ignis were strangers, like Ignis hadn't known all the same persons as Noct. "She used to tell me nursery rhymes and things, and there was this one about cats, about why they have nine lives.

"I guess I just thought," Noct said with a steady certainty that was beginning to turn Ignis's stomach, "that would be good—if you had nine lives, too. It doesn't change anything, Specs."

Ignis wanted to disagree with that. Everything was changed, or at least, everything that was _him_ was changed. Maybe that was what was really turning his stomach: turning over his hands and considering the claws that had taken the place of what had been nails; flinching at the scrape of chair legs across the floor and realizing that the strange heaviness atop his head were ears and their accompanying muscles; feeling his face with his fingertips so that he could gingerly map out each change that had mutilated his face.

"It's not that bad," Noct was saying. "It doesn't change anything, you're still you."

Ignis flinched at that, too, and he felt pricks of painful heat where the claws had dug into his face. Noct frowned, beginning to reach out toward him, and Ignis tucked his hands into his lap. 

"I want a mirror."

The words seemed to jar Noct, who stopped with his hand outstretched toward Ignis. "Specs—"

"A mirror," Ignis repeated. "I want to see. Now, Noct."

Noct’s frown was beginning to look stubborn, like he was gearing himself up to say no. The thought of fighting with Noct, of the sheer number of hours it would take to persuade Noct once he’d dug in his heels and readied himself for the long haul, was abruptly exhausting. Ignis closed his hands into loose fists; the claws still dug into the heels of his palms.

"A mirror, Noct," he said again, "or I'll just get up and go myself."

He watched as Noct's eyes dropped down toward Ignis's lap, toward his fists, then lifted back toward Ignis's face. Maybe it was his fists, or maybe it was his face—maybe it was the changes to his hands and his face; either way, Noct seemed to deflate, his shoulders slumping.

"Okay." He levered himself out of his chair with a heavy, tired sigh. "Okay, just. It's not that bad, okay? It doesn't have to change anything."

That, Ignis decided several minutes later, was a lie. Maybe he shouldn't fault Noct for lying, not when Noct undoubtedly had Ignis's best interests at heart, but Noct was wrong. Noct had been wrong, and now Ignis was wrong, and everything—

"This is wrong," Ignis said. The edges of the hand mirror were digging into his palms, just over the red pinpricks still remaining from the claws, and he wondered if the mirror would crack if he held it much tighter. Or if it cracked, maybe it'd be for another reason; that happened in fairytales, didn't it? Mirrors cracking when hideous people looked into them, or shattering when monsters crept out from inside. 

"Specs." Noct's voice sounded pleading, uncertain for the first time since Ignis had woken. Ignis couldn't manage to look away from the mirror, but maybe that was for the best; he didn't know how he could bear to look at Noct. He instead watched as an ear flicked on the top of his reflection's head, swiveling in Noct's direction before flattening back down; his scalp tingled, like muscles were bunching and pulling beneath it, and he thought he would be sick if he opened his mouth. 

"Specs, please—"

His face—he looked glanced at it in the mirror, then looked away, staring at the reflection of the ceiling instead. It felt childish, peeking at himself in the mirror as though tiny looks wouldn't hurt. Or maybe it was because he was hoping and expecting his face to still be his, to still be human. Maybe that was the most childish part: the expectation that he'd see himself when he looked at the mirror again, and then the gut-wrenching hurt when it wasn't him. The thing in the mirror was all wrong, like jumbled puzzle pieces forced together, their edges bending and snapping. The things coming out of his face, long and fleshy and furred, aching as they hung heavily from his cheeks. 

How would he—how could he—

"How could you do this to me?" The mirror blurred when he held it closer to his face, and his eyes ached when he tried to focus on it. Everything was aching now, his head and his face and his hands and his feet; his lower back was aching, and if he had a tail, he thought he might cry. "Why would you do this to me?"

"I won't apologize." Noct's voice cracked; Ignis could feel the muscles over his scalp tighten, the ears moving outside—against—his will. 

"I can't do this without you," Noct said. "Specs, I couldn't lose you. Not like that. Not—just not like that."

Ignis lowered his hands to his lap again, still clutching the mirror. When he looked down at it, it was in focus again. Of course, he thought numbly. Most species of big cats were longsighted, and coeurls were likely among them; he had the claws and the ears and the whiskered tentacles, so why not the eyes, too? 

He wished he was blind instead, or even dead. 

"Noct," he said, speaking slowly and with care, biting back the sickening desire to say, _I wish you'd let me be, I wish you'd let me die, I wish I was dead, anything would be better than this_. The teeth in his mouth were sharp—he could feel how sharp when his tongue touched them—and he wondered if he could bite his tongue instead of his words. People committed suicide that way, chewing off their tongues and bleeding to death. It would be easy with these teeth, to set them in his tongue and then clamp down. Wouldn't that be better than this, than saying, "I don't think I want to see you right now."

Noct muttered his _Okay_ low enough that Ignis likely wouldn't have heard it if he'd still been human. That wasn't the case, though, and so he felt an ear prick and turn toward Noct, and he heard Noct breathe in shakily, like he was searching for something else to say. He heard Noct shuffle his feet, and he heard Noct leave the room, shutting the door with a muted _click_. He could hear Noct outside the room, too—he could hear the muffled _thmph_ as Noct leaned against the wall, and he could hear as Noct hissed, _Fuck_.

"Fuck," Ignis echoed after him, letting go of the mirror so he could cover his face with his hands. "Oh fuck."

x

Noct didn't come back that night, and Ignis took the opportunity of being alone to consider his body. To assess the damages, as it were.

The new, strange flatness of his face; the furred ears on the top of his scalp; the long, thickly muscled whisker-like (or were they tentacle-like? He'd never had to think of it before) appendages coming from his cheeks. Those were all things he'd examined, however briefly, with the mirror Noct had given him. They'd been bad enough, but Ignis doubted that they were the extent of the magic done to him. When so much was changed on his head, it only stood to reason that there would be a comparable ratio of changes throughout the rest of his body. If he was correct and there were—and god, if he had a _tail_ —he'd rather have the opportunity to see them and come to terms with them as best he could, without added insult of an audience. 

He was already aware of the claws on his hands, so he wasn't particularly surprised to push down the bedcovers and find claws on his feet; he was equally unsurprised to find his teeth changed, since he'd felt that change with his tongue hours before. His joints all seemed to bend the same, and when he climbed out of bed, his walking gait didn't seem to be much changed, though the claws on his toes would likely make shoes uncomfortable for the first while. He'd likely have to wear larger sizes to accommodate the added length. All of that, however, could be manageable. He could make it work.

His skin, on the other hand, was a different matter. With a more critical eye, he'd realized that what he'd thought to be odd shadows or bruises were markings, primarily on his upper arms and shoulders, his thighs, and—when he took himself to the toilet to use the larger and better lit mirror—the whole of his back. The markings were darkest and most defined along his back and across his shoulders, and they grew fainter and harder to pick out the closer they were to his belly. Much like the belly, he thought grimly, of a cat. Perhaps he should be grateful that the crystal hadn't decided it necessary to cover him with fur.

"Thank the Astrals for small favors," he said to himself, swallowing hard when his voice broke. 

The Astrals' favors hadn't extended so far as his arse, though. He did have a tail, as thickly furred as the ears and the whiskers on his head. He closed his eyes when he saw it, clenching his hands in the waistband of the pajama bottoms he'd been dressed in. It wasn't so bad. It didn't have to be that bad. It was a tail, not the end of the world. He would just—he should just stop thinking about it. There wasn't anything to be done about any of this, other than dusting himself off and moving on. There were worse things in the world than being whatever _this_ was. He could be dead, or a daemon; to be deformed, a miscreation—it was bearable. It'd be bearable. He should be thankful he was alive, that Noct brought him back; he should be thankful that Noct cared. 

He opened his eyes again, looking at himself in the mirror. His face, he decided, was the worst, just by dint of being so visible, for having the ears and the whiskers and the spots. His chest and belly seemed normal enough, more or less human: pale and unspotted, with only a solitary pair of nipples. His body hair was thicker than before, and the texture was softer, smoother; it was all in places as before, though—armpits, lower arms and legs, and groin. His groin—

Ignis pushed the pajama bottoms further down his legs, to just above his knees. Much of what he knew of animals—cats being farsighted, fish walking on land, jellyfish growing younger—was what he'd gleaned from Noct's general interest in animals. Ignis was aware that cats had barbs on their penises, but he had no idea what that looked like in practice, or how that would translate to human genitalia, if it translated at all. His cock looked the same—or at least, he thought it looked the same as before. Considering how long it had taken him to realize he had yards long whiskers coming from his face, though, what he thought didn't seem to hold much weight, and what he expected didn't seem to have much in common with reality.

He touched himself gingerly, lifting his cock with the side of his thumb, taking care to keep his claws away from his flesh. His cock still looked the same as he remembered it, and when he ran the flat of his thumb down the shaft of his cock, the skin seemed smooth and barbless. Ignis hooked his thumb around his cock again, holding it to the side and out of the way as he reached between his legs with his other hand, feeling carefully. His balls seemed whole and intact, as unchanged as his cock and his nipples. He'd likely never have use for them again, considering the state of the rest of his body, but at least there was some part of him that was the same as it'd been before. He shifted, spreading his legs wider, and reached a little further back. 

At the first jolt, he thought he'd caught a claw on a bit of skin just past his balls. He froze, unsure if he should try to check and see if he were bleeding, or if he should pull his hands out from between his legs before he managed to injure himself worse. He crooked his finger so he could tap delicately at the spot he'd likely scratched with a claw. The spot didn't feel sore—just a bit tender. He pressed his knuckle a bit harder, trying to test the tenderness, and gasped when he felt a second jolt, like someone had run electrical wire through the bones of his pelvis and thighs. His knuckle had, he realized a growing sense of detachment, slid into him somehow. He could feel the pressure of it pressing up behind his balls—pressing _in_ —and that. That wasn't right.

He'd brought the hand mirror into the toilet with him, in order to better see his back. He grabbed it now, dropping his pajama bottoms to his ankles and hunkering down into a wide-spread crouch. It was awkward, trying to find a proper angle for the mirror with one hand and to hold his balls out of the way with the other, all while trying to keep his own head from blocking the light and keep the claws on his hands from tearing his genitals to shreds. He could feel his palms growing sweaty as he fumbled with the mirror and his own cock and balls, and he cursed bitterly. Trust him to be unable even to fondle himself properly. With his abysmal luck, he'd likely manage to scratch his junk up badly enough he would need to ask for help. Sitting on the bed, spreading his legs so Gladio could put salve on his damn perineum, was exactly what he needed to finish an unbearably miserable day. Gladio would certainly mock him about it for years, would bring it up in conversation whenever—

He hissed in sharply through his teeth as a fingertip, along with one particularly sharp claw, slid painfully into—

"Oh, fuck me," Ignis said, his voice cracking again. He could see it now, the tightly furled hole just behind his balls, concealed by loose folds of sensitive flesh. A cunt. A vaginal opening. A _pussy_. He laughed, short and harsh and sobbing, sitting with his bare arse on the cold tile and his pajama bottoms around his ankles. 

x

Noct didn't return the next morning, either, and Ignis wondered if Noct knew about all of the changes. Someone must have dressed Ignis in the pajamas he was wearing, which meant someone had seen his naked body, at least momentarily. Maybe they hadn't seen his—seen the _cunt_ —but they would have seen spots and the tail and the hair that was much more fur. Someone, whether it was Gladio or Prompto or Noct, or maybe all three, had seen almost as much of Ignis's body as he had. They'd know what was under his clothes, and they'd know how much his body had been mutilated; they would always know and he wouldn't be able to hide it from them. 

The thought of that—the anger that someone else knew about Ignis's body, maybe even more, than Ignis knew himself—had kept him up half of the night; he'd spent the other half tossing and turning, unable to find a position to sleep in. He'd been overly aware of his body: the tail was pinched when he laid on his back and it rested uncomfortably heavy along his leg if he laid on his belly; the rustle of the pillowcases was too loud for the ears; the whisker-tentacles meant he couldn't lie on his side or rest his cheek against the pillows.

When morning came, he flung open the drapes, squinting in the light until his eyes adjusted. He made the bed, plucking at the bedding delicately with fingertips and claws. The end result was lackluster, the top sheet and cover clumsily tucked and folded, their hems pricked and unraveling where Ignis had tried to carefully hold them. It was probably fitting, like a spontaneous metaphor for the current state of his life. For the continuing state of his life. He smoothed his hand over the bedcover, then sat on the side of the bed, facing the window and wondering what he was meant to do now. 

He was still sitting there, however much later it was, when someone knocked at the bedroom door. Ignis waited, and after a few moments he heard a second knock, then the door opening. 

"Hey," Gladio's voice said. "How you doin'?"

Gladio's voice was noticeably quieter than Noct’s had been. He was also, when Ignis glanced over to check, standing just inside the doorway with a studied nonchalance, and Ignis wondered if Gladio had picked up on some sign of discomfort, or if he’d been warned by Noct before he came. Either option felt overly invasive, and Ignis felt a spike of frustration rush up, hot and furious. 

"Tell me, Gladio," he said sharply, baring his teeth toward him, "how do you think I'm doing?"

He felt a vicious sense of satisfaction when Gladio reacted, taking a small step backwards. His satisfaction was short-lived, though, and regret and self-disgust were right on its heels, along with a bone-deep weariness. 

"Iggy," Gladio said tentatively, still all the way across the room, and Ignis couldn't blame him. He'd stay across the room from himself, too, if he was given the opportunity; if he could, he'd put a world between himself and this body.

"I'm fine, Gladio."

"Bullshit." Gladio took a few steps further into the room, jerking his chin upward. "You okay with me joining you?"

It was a question worth careful consideration. There was no reason for him to deny Gladio's company besides the obvious, and Gladio was endearingly noble at the best of times, and irritatingly noble at the worst. He'd do what he thought best, no matter what Ignis thought of the matter; if Ignis gave him any cause for concern, however insignificant, then Gladio would likely take it upon himself to fix things. With another problem—a work conflict or something similar—Gladio's undoubtedly earnest intervention would be appreciable if only for the sentiment. This problem, though, was well beyond Gladio's means—it was beyond any person's means—and Ignis thought that any attempt to fix such unrighteable wrongs would only hurt.

"Not at all." Ignis motioned toward the chair that Noct had occupied the day before. He'd prefer to have Gladio sit farther from the bed—farther from Ignis—but there weren't any other chairs, and he could hardly ask Gladio to drag the chair to the other side of the room. 

 

He turned back toward the window, scowling as he felt an ear turn backward, catching the sounds of Gladio taking the invitation: crossing the room with heavy footsteps, dragging the chair back a few inches, sinking into the chair with a low groan. As the room grew silent, he wondered if Gladio was watching the way the ears on his head flicked and twitched nervously, bestially, and he wondered how much disgust was on Gladio's face. 

No, that was unfair. Gladio was too noble and too good-hearted; even if there was disgust, there'd be more concern. Gladio, with all his stubborn earnestness, would push through whatever disgust or distress he had just so that he could do what he deemed right. 

As if to prove Ignis right, Gladio cleared his throat and said, "You think we should talk?"

Ignis looked away from the window and down at his lap. His hands were lying there, neatly folded together: right hand tucked into the left, a lax form of parade rest. It was exhausting, the continual jolts of surprise each time he saw or felt some changed part of his own body—this time, the dissonance of the claws, curving long and sharp and alien at the ends of his fingertips. As exhausting as it was, though, only one day in, he thought it would be far worse months or years from now, when he grew accustomed to this body of his. 

"Iggy?"

The claws of his left hand dug into his right as he tensed—not enough to draw blood, only enough to blanched depressions in his skin. He lifted his fingers one by one, from the small finger to the pointer, and said, "Yes, I suppose we should."

There was the squeak of the chair as Gladio shifted behind him. "Iggy, can you—come here, 'kay? So we can actually talk face-to-face?"

Maybe, Ignis thought as he stood from the bed, this was all a test. It'd fit Gladio's character—to assure himself that Ignis was neither a threat to himself nor to anyone else, particularly Noct. Any questioning of Ignis's fitness for his job, or for even being near Noct, wouldn't be uncalled for, considering how Ignis had lashed at him last night—considering how he still wanted to lash out at him _today_. Ignis edged past Gladio, twisting his body to try to keep the long, twitching whiskers as far from him as possible, and took a seat on the edge of the bed again, this time close enough to be social while still remaining just out of arm's reach. 

"Iggy," Gladio said again, and Ignis wondered if he thought the repetition of Ignis's name was necessary, if he had his doubts as to Ignis's actual presence in the conversation. Ignis lifted his chin, raising his eyebrows as he looked Gladio in the face.

"Well, Gladio?" he asked. "What did you want to discuss?"

Gladio sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck; it felt overtly paternalistic, like the reprimands Ignis had received as a child, and he felt his face flush hot with embarrassment and anger. It was humiliating, being expected to sit down and quietly be scolded as though he was twelve, and it was infuriating to be trapped into doing so; if he lashed out at Gladio, he'd only be proving Gladio's paternalistic attitude right.

"You were harsh with Noct yesterday." 

Ignis gritted his teeth, feeling an uneasy prickling when even that felt strange, his jaw shutting at a different angle than it had before yesterday. "I'm aware, Gladio. I think it's understandable that I was emotionally distressed yesterday."

Gladio sighed again, just as heavily as before, and Ignis hated how it made him feel even worse.

"Look," he said, sounded kind and understanding. Ignis thought, rather unkindly, that he would punch him if they were still teenagers. "I get that, I really do. It's just—I think we're all still pretty fucked-up over what happened to you, okay? Especially Noct.

"I don't know if it was your plan or his, but seemed like a good idea,” he told Ignis, his voice growing flat, like he was recounting something particularly dull. First dawn in how many years? Why not watch it from the roof, make it feel momentous.”

"Make an occasion out of it," Ignis muttered.

Gladio laughed, the sound of it short and flat. "Yeah. Make an occasion. Shit, Iggy, it was just—it was so fucking stupid. It's not like we were even doing anything, but the roof was a mess, rubble all over. The sun hadn't even come up yet, but the clouds were finally going away, and there were stars.

"Fucking stars. I dunno, how long's it been? But you—" Gladio gestured toward Ignis sharply. "You're looking up at the stars, and maybe you just got dizzy, but you kinda stepped backwards, and then you were just falling off the roof."

Ignis appreciated Gladio's bluntness, and he appreciated Gladio's lack of detail even more. He could imagine it well enough that he wondered if it was memory: the dizziness that swelled at the base of his skull as he stared up at the stars, the way the world seemed to turn over beneath him, the slide of broken concrete and rebar beneath his feet. Stumbling backwards, trying to find his footing again, while still staring up at the stars. The scrape of concrete against the back of his calves as he fell backwards. 

It would be a long way to fall. It _was_ a long way to fall. The Citadel was just shy of eight hundred feet; when he tumbled off the roof, he would've been falling at thirty-two feet a second, and he would have been accelerating; by the second second, he would've been falling at sixty-four feet a second, then ninety-six feet by the third second. One hundred and twenty-eight the fourth, one hundred and sixty the fifth, and one hundred and ninety-two the sixth. By the seventh second, he would've been falling two hundred and twenty-two feet a second, and he would've fallen a total seven hundred and eighty feet, give or take a few feet for conversion. He would've fallen for just over seven seconds, then: long enough to realize what was happening, to flail about wildly in mid-air; long enough realize that he was going to die, and how he was going to die; long enough to realize the inevitability of it all.

Nothing was certain except death and taxes, but perhaps there was truth in the idea that any object beginning to fall must end its fall at some point. Perhaps there was certainty resting in the relentless pull of gravity. With just over seven seconds, Ignis must've known that his fall would be stopped by the ground: the dual certainty of death and gravity's pull. 

It was a sobering thought, and not one he could shake. He wondered how he'd landed—on his head? On his outstretched arms? On his feet, like a cat?

"It must've been bad," Ignis said carefully, watching as Gladio grimaced, looking a little sick.

"Yeah. Yeah, there wasn't much left." Gladio cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded strained when he said, "Shit, Iggy, there wasn't—shit."

Ignis swallowed. "And that's why Noct...?"

"I don't know what happened, Iggy," Gladio said. "Noct—there's no way he knew what he was doing. He was panicked, and I think he just acted." 

Ignis licked his lips; the prick of the fangs against his tongue was still unexpected, and he poked his tongue at the short, sharp teeth at the front of his mouth. (Incisors? Canines? He would have to find the properly terminology. He could ask Noct. Noct would certainly know, and it would give Ignis a way to reestablish conversation; to apologize for his anger, for how he'd lashed out, for the bitterness he still felt.) He ran his tongue over the teeth once more, then cleared his throat. "A coeurl, though?"

"You know magic better than me," Gladio answered. "Look, I don't know how the crystal works—worked—whatever. I just know it does, okay? So all the theory? That's your territory."

Gladio was beginning to look more peevish than sick. Ignis smiled at him; it felt tight and unnatural over his teeth—over the teeth in his mouth. “Yesterday,” he told Gladio, “Noct said that he’d thought about a nursery rhyme about why cats have nine lives.”

“Yeah?” Gladio’s aggravation was becoming more apparent, though Ignis thought it was likely caused as much by crystal as Noct and himself. “That sounds pretty damn typical.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Ignis asked. “Why wouldn’t Noct rewrite the laws of nature because of a nursery rhyme he heard when he was a child? Either that,” he added drily, “or he just wanted me to finally learn to land on my feet.”

Gladio snorted loudly, and Ignis felt his smile widen, though it still felt strange over his teeth. His hands were aching; he uncurled his fists, his palms sore and pocked from the claws, and he slid them beneath his thighs where Gladio wouldn’t see how they were shaking.

 

x

The changes, it seemed, were never-ending. Every day it felt like another part of Ignis—of his _humanness_ —was scraped away and replaced by something mutilated and wrong. 

There were the surfaces changes—the changes that were the easiest the spot and were the first that he had noticed himself. Most of these could be hidden, or at least mitigated. His hair could be brushed up and back to lessen the visibility of his ears; his eyes could be hidden behind tinted lenses; he tucked his tail down the legs of his trousers, he kept his hands and accompanying claws gloved, and his fangs were easy to hide, provided he spoke and smiled less. The long, whisker-like tentacles caused much more of a problem, as did the pale, spotted discoloration of his skin. Barring amputation, Ignis wasn't sure how to hide such major changes from the public eye. Besides, amputation would only take care of the tentacles, with no certainty as to the end result, particularly in regards to blood loss. Major tattooing or scarification could potentially even out his skin tone, or at least make the markings less visible, but it was just as likely that any trauma to his skin would push melanin production into overdrive, and hyper-pigmentation would only make the markings more visible. 

The easiest fix for all of the surface changes, therefore, was simply not to enter the public eye. Most of his governmental work could be performed with little to no contact with outside persons, and what little contact was necessary could take place through email or other forms of distance communication. The only persons Ignis had to maintain physical contact with were persons vital to the Citadel or to Noct's well-being: Gladio, Prompto, the marshal, and a handful of Crownsguard and Privy Council members. It was perhaps two dozen persons in total, which felt like two dozen persons too many; it was a manageable number, though. He could cover up enough of the changes, and what he couldn't hide— What he couldn't hide—

What he couldn't hide were just things he'd have to live with, things he'd have to inflict on everyone around him. And at first, maybe that was the worst part: being able to see the discomfort in the eyes of those few people he saw, catching the way they looked at him with distress at best, and more often with disgust. There were other changes, though, slower and more subtle as they came to his attention. When they came on, it was like the shifting of tectonic plates beneath the ground, the horror of being thrown off his feet by what had been stable ground.

His diet, his temperament, his energy levels—it felt like everything had changed and nothing had stayed the same. He was irritable, he was anxious, he was territorial; his senses had gone haywire and anything unfamiliar made his aggression levels spike. He could feel the irrationality of his own damn brain, and he couldn’t manage to stop it. He couldn’t keep himself from snarling when someone—anyone—pressed in too close, and he saw how they all recoiled from him. He did it himself, balking and cringing as his brain turned tired circles, trapped between fight or flight. 

“It’s fine,” Noct told him. He was smiling at Ignis, but he was keeping his distance, too, barely within arm’s reach. Ignis wanted to grab him and pull him closer, wanted to dig in his claws and shake him; he wanted to retreat to someplace quieter, some lonely place where his brain could stop turning its frantic circles.

“I know,” he lied, and when Noct edged close to bump shoulders with him, like he used to when they had been children, something warm and liquid slithered down Ignis’s spine.

 

As the summer days grew hotter, Ignis grew needier, a hunger for physical affection gnawing at his belly. He ached with it, like the heat of the summer had sunk into his flesh, slowly and quietly burning him away from inside. He wanted—he didn’t know what he wanted. He wanted too many things, all of them contradictory. He wanted the lazy comfort of the summer heat, and he wanted physical presence of another body, and he wanted the sharp ache of something he couldn’t name.

He leaned too close to Noct, brushed too hard against Prompto, spent too long edging close to Gladio. He woke up sticky and sweaty in his bed, his cock softening and the front of his pajama bottoms stained with cum. He could feel himself _ache_ , the hot line of pain tracing down to curl tight between his hips. The ache grew with the summer heat, and Ignis’s bitterness grew with it. 

“Hey,” Prompto said, reaching for Ignis’s face, “you okay, Igster? You look— _shit!_ ”

Ignis’s jaw was throbbing from how hard he’d snapped his teeth at Prompto, and his ears ached from Prompto’s startled shout. He could feel unease prickle its way across his back, and when Prompto—stupid and stubborn and obviously afraid—reached toward him again, Ignis took one step backward, then a second. 

“Hey, hey, Iggy,” Prompto said, coming after him, boxing him in. Ignis felt his ears flatten and his hands curl into fists, felt his lips curl back as Prompto pushed closer. “Shit, dude, hey—”

“Prompto!” Gladio snapped from the doorway, and when Prompto turned toward him, Ignis pushed past him. He pushed his way past Gladio, too, and came to a dead halt in the hallway, face-to-face with Noct.

Noct looked—Ignis couldn’t read his face, his brain lost in its frantic, confusing circles. He wanted to lie down, to go limp and willing; he wanted to pull Noct down over him, wanted the heavy assurance of Noct’s body pressed against his. He wanted to climb every last stair to the top of the Citadel and throw himself off. 

“Specs,” Noct said, the same gentle way he’d been saying it for the last few months; it was the same kind of voice, Ignis thought, that he’d used with the cats at the shelter. 

Ignis wanted that; he wanted to roll himself in the easy affection. He clenched his hands into fists, then shoved his fists into his trouser pockets. “Please,” he said, his throat feeling hot and swollen like he’d spent the day screaming, “don’t touch me.”

Noct took a step back, and Ignis took a step back, too, and they were just past arm’s reach. Ignis could feel his body shiver, still wanting and wanting and _wanting_. 

“I won’t,” Noct said, and he was clenching his hands into fists, too, looking as miserable and uncomfortable as Ignis felt. “I promise, no one will.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Scientia,” someone called from down the hall, their footsteps barely muffled by the thick carpet. Ignis sighed, trying to compose his face before he turned to face the person. 

It was a Crownsguard member, someone Ignis recognized in a distant sort of way: a newer member who signed on in the last few years of the dark, someone who’d lived in the outer edges of Insomnia, or maybe Lestallum, before Niflheim’s attack. Ignis wasn’t sure of the man’s name—Tilio? Tubos?—and didn’t remember ever sharing more than a half-dozen words with the man. 

“Yes?” he asked as the Crownsguard reached him, looking flushed and harried. He smelled like sweat and something sharp and tangy, like body spray or a cheap cologne, and Ignis tried to keep from curling his nose. 

“The marshal,” the Crownsguard said, gesturing back down the hall with a jerk of his head, “wants to see you.”

That, Ignis thought, explained the Crownsguard’s harried look, the frustration that seemed to leach from him as he turned to return the way he’d come, Ignis following a few paces behind. The role of gofer was ignoble at the best of times; to play gofer for Ignis—well, Ignis wasn’t surprised that the Crownsguard seemed irritated. Ignis would be irritated, too, if he was in the man’s position.

“He’s in the training hall,” the Crownsguard explained as he led Ignis to the stairway at the far end of the hall. The door to the stairway was the solid weight of a fire door, and the Crownsguard grunted as he shoved it open. He didn’t hold it for Ignis, striding ahead quickly, and Ignis had to catch the door with his arm as it began to swing closed on him. 

He didn’t particularly like the southern stairway, but he didn’t like any of the closed stairways. They all smelled stale, the air gone flat from a lack of circulation, and the fluorescent lights were too bright for his eyes, reflecting off the silver handrails and glossy paint of the cinder block walls. And then there was the noise—the high-pitched hum of the lights, the slam of doors up and down the staircase, the sound of footsteps and people talking. It all echoed, bouncing off the walls and ricochetting through Ignis’s skull, pounding in time with his pulse with a heavy, throbbing beat that made his head and neck ache. 

The door shut behind Ignis with a crash that seemed to slam into the space behind Ignis’s eyes, and Ignis felt his ears flinch down close to his skull. He didn’t bother to hide his wince, since the Crownsguard was tromping down the stairs in front of him, obviously doing his level-best to ignore Ignis. The echo of sounds and the glare of the lights felt deafening, and Ignis gave in to his discomfort, tucking his ears close to his skull and lifting his hand to shield his eyes. 

He was halfway to the next landing when the door behind him slammed shut again. The crash reverberated like before, and Ignis was still wincing when he felt something slam into him from behind. The weight threw him off balance, and time seemed to slow peculiarly as he fell down the stairs, his feet stumbling as he reached out for the handrail. His fingers caught the rail, his fingertips hitting, then curling around a shaft of the rail. His feet were out from under him, though, and he felt his fingers slip from the shaft, his nails—his claws—catching and tearing on the shaft as he continued to fall.

When he hit the landing, it was like hitting concrete. Of course it was like hitting concrete, he thought dazedly; it _was_ concrete. The air was forced from his lungs in a burning _whumph_ , and it felt like his body was collapsing in on himself, like his ribcage and spine were compressing down into the space where his lungs were. The weight was still on him, heavy and immoveable, and he wondered if a boulder—when a boulder—

The staircase was echoing with the glare of the lights and the crashing of footsteps. He could hear a shrill whine, and he thought it might be him. There was blood on the concrete in front of his eyes, too close for him to properly focus on it. When a hand gripped his head and lifted his head, the extra inches of distance between him and the blood allowed his eyes to focus on it. Then the hand pushed, and Ignis lost focus on the blood as his face was slammed into the concrete landing.

x

He was bruised and battered when he woke up, his body stiff and chilled from lying on the floor. His catalogue of aches was moderate, though perhaps 'manageable' was a better word; his face felt hot from pain, his nose seemed to be clogged, and his lower lip was swollen. His left wrist felt sprained, and a few of his claws were torn, feeling tender and loose at his fingertips. There was something wrapped tightly around his neck, and he snuck a hand up to touch it, trying to keep the movements as small as possible. It was rope, about as thick around as his thumb, and the slick, woven texture made him think it might be nylon. The aches and pains, the sticky, drying blood on his face, and the rope tied around his neck all suggested that he'd been banged about in order to be brought here, though he wasn't sure where 'here' was. 

The room he was in was large and mostly nondescript, without any defining features or decorations. There were no windows, and the door was the plain sort, likely a steel fire door. The lights overhead were fluorescent tubes, the floor beneath him was concrete, and there were panels of chainlink, rising to just shy of the ceiling, splitting the back half of the room into smaller compartments. It was, in all, a standard storage room; there were dozens of rooms just like it in the Citadel, and there had to be hundreds more identical rooms throughout Insomnia, between apartment buildings, schools, community centers, and industry buildings. It was impossible for him to guess where he might be—and that was if he was even still in Insomnia. He could've been taken outside the city, perhaps to the water treatment plant, or even to one of the many factories that lay in partial ruin outside the Wall. 

As quiet as the room was, but it wasn’t empty. There were people clustered together not far away, between him and the door. Most of them were looking toward him, and one of the men—third from the right, standing behind several of his fellows—was almost immediately familiar to Ignis.

It shouldn’t have been surprising to recognize the young Crownsguard member—the one who’d come to fetch Ignis for the marshal. After seeing him, it was easier to recognize most everyone in the room. They were all Crownsguard, down to the last, and they were all younger members; they were men and women who’d joined during the later years of Noct’s absence, which meant they were men and women who’d never known Ignis—or at least had never known him well—before he’d stumbled right off the Citadel and into this farce of a life. 

(He tried not to think of how that must mean they—these men and women sworn to the same king as him—had even less reason to think of him as human, than he did himself.)

When they were young, he, Gladio, and Noct had all been trained in what to do in the case of abduction and rescue. It'd been decades ago, but he still remembered most of what they'd been taught. The most important thing, according to their instructors, was that to make themselves human and build a rapport with their abductors. 

He knew, intellectually, how best to build a rapport, and he had more in common with the men and women in this room than he did with most people in Insomnia. They all lived and worked at the Citadel and they all served Noct; they knew the same people and the same stories, and they walked through the same halls and rooms, and they ate the same food. He lived in the same world as all of them, even if he kept himself closer to the periphery. He needed to offer that to them—–he just needed to remind them that he was human; that he was a part of their community; that he belonged in the Citadel.

He tried to push himself to sit upright, but he was only halfway up, still on his hands and knees, when the rope around his neck pulled taut. It was high on his neck, and he choked as it dug into his neck just over his voice box. He grabbed at his neck, at the rope around it, as he craned his head to look behind him. Pulled taut as it was, the rope had lifted several inches from the floor; one end was tied around Ignis's neck, and the other end was tied around one of the posts of the chainlink compartments. The post in question was adjacent to the gate of a compartment; the gate was hanging open, and Ignis had the awful thought that it looked very much like a dog run, or any other type of cage for larger animals. 

"I need to return," he choked out, past the rope around his neck. "The king is expecting me. I need to go back to the Citadel."

A few of the Crownsguard members looked between themselves, but there was no answer. Ignis hadn't expected one, not really, but there was still a burst of disappointment, along with a building horror. The chainlink compartment behind him—the _cage_ behind him—seemed to loom over him, like its open gate was a mouth stretching wider and wider. _Build a rapport_ , the instructor had taught him twenty years ago. _Give them reason to recognize your humanity._

Ignis pushed down the hindbrain urge to run-run- _run_ , forcing himself to crawl a few inches closer to the cage, just close enough that he had the slack in the rope necessary to sit upright properly, rather than crouching on the floor like an animal. He could manage this, so long as he took care in his words and his actions, in how he presented himself. 

One of the Crownsguard coughed, and that seemed to be a signal. Several of the Crownsguard began to move toward him, still between Ignis and the door. It put him, he was aware, in a very perilous position: trapped between a rock and a hard place—or, to be more literal, between a cage and people who likely considered him a beast. His mouth was filling with saliva and his palms were growing damp. He swallowed, wiping his palms over his trousers and flinching when one of his loose claws caught on the weave and tore further. 

The Crownsguard at the front of the group looked as familiar as all the others, though Ignis couldn't remember his name. He couldn't remember the names of the men behind him, either, or the woman, nor any of the men and women who were waiting further back. He swallowed again, straightening his spine as the Crownsguard drew nearer. He should remember their names—why didn't he remember their names? He knew—he had known—so many people; what was a dozen more? 

"Please," he said when the man at the head of the group came to a stop in front of him. The disparities of their heights, with the Crownsguard standing while Ignis knelt, seemed enormous, and Ignis couldn't keep his ears from flattening back against his skull as the space between his shoulder blades began to prickle. "I need to return to the king."

When the man shifted his weight to his left leg, Ignis tried to ready himself, to force his muscles and joints to relax. The man was still wearing his Crownsguard uniform, and the heaviness of his boot sent Ignis toppling backwards, his shoulders hitting the concrete floor, then the back of his head. The boot followed him, pinning him to the floor by his shoulder, and Ignis grabbed at the boot, trying to push it back, to keep it from grinding his shoulder into the concrete.

The Crownsguard thrust his weight forward, and Ignis felt something in his shoulder crunch beneath the man's boot. The pain cut through him, shocking in its abruptness, and the air in his lungs turning hard and cold, like a ball of steel he couldn't move from behind his ribs. The boot ground down further, and Ignis's mouth gaped open silently, his jaw moving in tiny twitches. 

He couldn't move, not even when the man stepped back. His hands fell to his chest, his palms facing up and his fingers curled inward; when his eyes drifted down toward them, he thought they looked rather stupid. Stupid, disappointing, weak—he closed his eyes, struggling to wheeze around the twisted knot his lungs were making in his chest. 

"They're real, then?" he heard a person say distantly, somewhere far past the rasp of Ignis's breathing. There was another voice, even farther away, and Ignis couldn't make out the words over his breathing. He needed to open his eyes, to try to explain himself, to build a rapport. 

When he did manage to open his eyes, the man was crouching beside him, grabbing Ignis's wrist and yanking it upward. The cold, hard feeling in his lungs seemed to sink down toward his stomach, twisting his stomach up in nauseating anticipation.

When the man pressed down onto Ignis’s torn claws, Ignis yowled, thrashing and jerking against the rope. The rope dug into his neck, choking him, but it also gave—not a lot, but it was enough that Ignis could twist his head around and snap at the man. 

The man’s skin was firm, but it broke beneath the pressure of Ignis’s jaw, and Ignis felt his teeth sink into the man’s flesh, into blood and fatty tissue and muscle. The blood was overwhelmingly metallic in his mouth, hot and slick as it coated the inside of Ignis’s mouth, and Ignis’s stomach turned over from the taste and the smell and the pain of his torn claws. 

“Fuck!” the man shouted, and Ignis felt the man’s flesh tear further as the man yanked his arm way. “The fucking bitch _bit_ me—”

There was a rushing commotion, the confusion of people shouting and running, and Ignis caught someone moving on the edge of his field of vision just as a weight, heavy and low, slammed into the side of his head.

When he woke the second time, he was certain he had a concussion. His thoughts were slow and stupid, all muddled things he lost each time the lights stabbed into his eyes. He was losing time, too, and sense of place, not sure why—

Where was Noct? Ignis was meant to be where he was, not here. He wasn't meant to be here.

“I shouldn’t,” he said, the words getting tangled on his tongue and coming out stilted “be here. I need to go—”

“No, the whiskers first.”

Ignis closed his eyes, wishing he could close his throat, too. He could taste vomit in the back of his mouth, sour and burning, and it was turning his stomach. When a hand touched his face, turning his head to the side, Ignis moaned. Something cool and smooth pressed against his cheek, and the shock of the temperature seemed to rattle through his head.

“There,” someone said, and Ignis felt his cheek burst into flame. 

It was the same as the ring, fire burning its way into his skull, his skin turning to ash and flaking off. He twisted his head away, trying to pull himself free, and the pain cut lower into his cheek, digging deep. The hand on his face was still gripping his chin, and Ignis opened his mouth, trying to twist his neck to snap at the hand, at the pain, at anything near enough.

“Fucking _bitch_ ,” a voice snarled over him, and he felt the scrape of metal against his teeth. 

A knife. It was a knife, digging through his cheek. The tip of the knife skittered off the curve of a tooth, slicing into his gums before it was pulled free. Blood was streaming over his face, pouring into his mouth and his nostrils, and when he tried to scream, it was a burble. 

His hands, he realized, were pinned. He tried to yank them free, and he felt something give in his left shoulder with a crunch. He choked, gagging on the blood in his mouth, and when he breathed it, it was wet and hot and thick, coating his throat. He panicked, trying to breathe in harder, and gagged again on the blood in his mouth and nostrils. 

When the knife returned to his face, cutting into his cheek again, he thrashed against the hands pinning him, bucking his hips and wrenching his face to the side again. This time the knife dragged down his cheek toward his hairline, just below his eye. He snarled open mouthed, wrenching his face back in the other direction to snap wildly. He heard someone curse, then felt a hand grab onto his whisker and tear. 

It wasn’t like fire this time; now it was like electricity, like a ball of lightning bursting in the center of his chest. He felt his heart shudder, slowing then picking up tempo; he could feel the echo of it in his cheek, where his whisker had been, blood pumping out with each heartbeat. He couldn’t move, his arms and legs as useless as dead things. Someone grabbed his face, turning it to bare his other cheek. Blood was sliding down his neck, soaking into his shirt and dripping into his ears; he could feel it bubbling at his lips and nostrils.

The second whisker was worse. He could hear himself whine, could feel his heart judder, trying to stop then trying to start again. The rest of his body felt cold, his arms and his legs and his trunk, but his face was on fire, like each time they sawed at his whisker they were pushing live embers into his flesh. 

By the end, it felt like he was beginning to tumble off the floor, like he was turning inside out and lifting away. He could feel his heartbeat like blows, beating him farther and farther out of his skull. The last bit of flesh from his second whisker snapped with thrum of pain that seemed to shake through him detaching the last bits of him from his hands and feet.

When the fingers pushed into his mouth, his jaw fell open, his muscles gone loose. Something hard brushed against his lower lip, then bumped the roof of his mouth. The knife, he thought, though the shape was wrong. He tried to close his mouth, but his jaw was too heavy. He tried to move his tongue, tried to spit out whatever was in his mouth, but his tongue was as heavy and immovable as his jaw.

Something—someone—a hand pressed down on his forehead, the skin uncomfortably cold against the burning of his face; the hand pushed hard, grinding the back of Ignis’s head against the pavement. The metal in his mouth tapped against the roof of his mouth again, then a tooth. There was a pinch at the gums just above his tooth, then his tooth was being twisted and yanked, the tooth cracking as it was torn from his jaw. 

It was agony. He could hear the blood in the back of his mouth, in his throat, gurgle as he tried to scream. The metal tapped against his mouth again, bumping its way to another tooth, and Ignis sobbed. 

He lost track of the teeth, of the cracking and tearing, of his gums and jaws being ripped open. He lost track of the rest of himself, too. When he was rolled over onto his side, he stared at his hands numbly. They were limp, his fingers curled, and he didn’t think he could move them even if he tried. When a pair of pliers, bloody from his mouth and teeth, were closed over the last bone of his little finger, at the base of the claw, he closed his eyes.

It was easier that way, not to see it happen; it was easier to let the bursts of pain, white-hot and electric, push him further out of his body. He didn’t want it anymore, anyway—he hadn’t wanted it since his first mutilation, when he was remade slipshod. All he wanted was to be done.

x

The bleeding stopped, after a time; it would begin again whenever he was jarred, the exposed flesh and bone and nerves of his fingers and cheeks and mouth throbbing, sluggishly oozing blood until they stopped again. His heart, on the other hand, didn’t stop. It would slow, its rhythm wavering like it was about to tumble to a standstill, then it would find a tempo again, beating harder and faster as though it had to make up for lost time. 

He didn’t know how long they left him in the cage, whether it was hours or days. There had been water, dirty and stagnant, poured too quickly down his throat, and there’d been a short while that he’d been alone in the room. There’d been constant pain, the throbbing agony of his exposed nerves, and there’d been the numbness of exhaustion when the pain was too much. 

Then, after hours, or days, however long it’d been, he was dragged back out of the cage, thrown down onto his back.

He tried to struggle when they tore his clothes off him; all he managed to do was push ineffectively at the hands on his arms and his legs—on his waist. His hands were covered with blood, some of it dried and flaking, some of it still wet and slick. His ruined fingers were stiff and numb, and it hurt too badly to do more than to try clumsily to push at the people. At the hands. There were too many of them, hands and people both, and he couldn’t keep track of them, couldn’t begin to put a number to the people, or to link the hands to the faces that were swimming up in his vision. His throat was closed up tight, and he could feel burning acid creep up from his stomach; the rest of him felt cold, though—his naked arms and legs, the soft defenselessness of his upturned belly.

A hand wrenched at his thigh, and Ignis moaned low in his throat as his hip jarred into the concrete. The moan reverberated through his throat and his jaw, up to his cheeks, and his whole head began throbbing again, like there were two hearts beating frantically at the places where his whiskers used to be. He could barely hear the voice that said, from somewhere farther down his too long, too distant body, “He’s got a pussy—“

There was laughter, loud and harsh and grating in his ears, and the hands on his body seemed to multiply—or maybe they were just pushing down harder, as harsh and grating as the voices. 

“Seriously?”

There were hands on his legs again, up on his thighs, and they were pulling him open. It was too far, too fast; he could feel his left femur grind sickeningly at the joint, and he twisted with it, his lower back bowing as he tried to lift his hips and ease the pressure spreading him open. 

“Eager,” someone said near his ear, close enough that he could feel the puff of their breath on his face and neck. He blinked, and his vision cleared enough that he could stare up at— At— He couldn’t remember this one’s name, and that—it felt wrong, and it felt unfair, to not even remember his name when he was looming over Ignis. If Ignis could remember his name, if he could say, _No, you’re wrong, I’m not—_

The man’s eyes flicked down, meeting Ignis’s just as someone else—someone down _there_ —grabbed at Ignis’s genitalia, yanking Ignis’s cock and balls to the side. He looked disgusted when Ignis gagged, vomit rising up to the back of his mouth, and that—that was unfair, too. That wasn’t Ignis’s fault, and _what was his name_?

“The pussy’s got a pussy,” another person said—not the surprised voice from earlier. This was another person, so was that—was it four? Five? Ignis felt his head list to the side, the throbbing in his face and skull too heavy for him to keep straight. The voices were too heavy to keep straight, too, and so were the hands, and they kept touching him, even when he tried to push at them. 

He needed to—where was—

"Shit, are you really—"

There was something shoving between his legs. Someone. It was _someone_ , a person he was supposed to know; a person who was supposed to know him. This wasn't what was meant to happen, and he was certain of that. He'd felt it rising up like the vomit in his throat, this certainty of wrong-wrong- _wrong_ that had been turning over in his stomach, climbing higher and higher behind his lungs. It was in his chest now, and it felt like it was grabbing his heart and his lungs and holding tight, squeezing at him. He had to move, had to get out—had to find a place he could breathe—

He rolled hard to his side, scrabbling at the floor as he tried to crawl away from the person between his legs. The scrape of his finger bones over concrete felt like someone had reached up between his legs with a hook, shredding his insides. He could feel his body convulse, his stomach and lungs and heart contracting and curling inwards; his hands were curling inwards, too, the exposed bones of his fingertips scraping over the floor as his hands formed into fists. He gagged, then retched, vomit splattering over his hands and the floor.

The hands on his hips dug in, yanking backward. Ignis's arms gave out, his elbows buckling as he was pulled back, and his chin slammed into the concrete and vomit. He turned his head to the side, gagging and coughing, and he felt his ruined cheek scrape along the concrete, tearing open further as he was dragged back.

The Crownsguard were still clustered around him, talking over him, but he couldn't parse the words, couldn't hear the distinct voices over his retching. The rope was digging deeper into his neck, beginning to choke him. He wanted it off. He wanted _them_ off. He tried to drag his leg away and out of reach, and only managed to slide it a few inches along the floor. Where was—why wasn’t—

Why was he alone?

“Please,” he tried to say, but the word was wet and slurred, incoherent even to him. Spit and vomit were dribbling out of his mouth. Blood, too—when he tried to swallow around the rope, he tasted blood, and he tried to swallow a second time when the blood began to fill his mouth again, welling from his ripped-up gums. 

“Please,” he tried again. “Don’t.”

The dental stop of the _d_ pressed his tongue up against the backs of his upper teeth, and their jagged, broken edges cut into his tongue. The blood and the vomit and spit were pooling in the side of his cheek, and he wondered if he’d drown like this, breathing it down into his lungs, or if he’d choke on the rope first. 

When the man between his legs began to push into him, Ignis breathed in hard, sobbing at the pain. He choked on that, too—felt the blood and vomit and spit get pulled back into his throat, then stick there, like none of it could slide down around the rope. Was there a difference between drowning and choking? Would it matter? He needed the rope off, he needed to breathe. 

He pawed at his throat, sliding his sticky palms over the rope. He couldn’t touch it with his fingers, couldn’t get his stupid, ruined fingers between the rope and his skin. He need it _off_ , needed to breathe without everything getting trapped in his throat. He gagged again, and then again when he dug his thumb along the rope, the nylon threads dragging over the exposed flesh and bone and nerves of his thumb tip. 

Someone was fisting their hand in his hair, forcing his head back, and Ignis felt his thumb slide out from the edge of the rope, slipping slick and easy through the blood and sweat. Before he could try again, the rope around his neck tightened, digging deeper into his throat. He could feel fingernails scraping across the skin of his neck, then the rope loosened. He dragged in shuddering breath, breathing down all the blood and spit and vomit in his mouth, and then tried to breathe out. The hand in his hair tightened, and Ignis felt the other hand leave his throat, grabbing his chin and jaw instead, yanking his head around so he was facedown to the concrete. 

This time when he threw up, it was an exhausted, boneless retching, like his body was too tired to heave. The hand in his hair was the only thing holding his face out of the vomit and blood, dangling him there over stinking puddle beneath him, and god. God, everything was burning—his throat and his scalp, his fingertips and the inside of his mouth, his cheeks and the inside of his nose—

“You’ll kill him like that,” a Crownsguard said near his head. Ignis vomited again, his body barely trembling, and he became aware, in a slow sort of way, that the rest of his body was still, too. That everyone around him was still. That the person between his legs—that the man inside of him—was still. 

That was awful, too—the heavy stillness of the man’s cock inside Ignis, the uncertainty if the man had already come, or if he was waiting to start thrusting again. If they were done. If Ignis was done. The question of when he could just be finished with this. 

He stared down at the frothy, yellow vomit, and the blood in it, and his hand lying beside it. When he blinked hard, he could see the white tips of bone through the haziness, and he wondered if Noct had seen the whiteness of his bone, too—if what Noct had seen had been as terrible as this. How could anything be as terrible as this? 

The hand in his hair jerked, shaking him, and Ignis let himself hang there in the Crownsguard’s hand, open-mouthed and sobbing.

x

What he hadn't known about pain was the animalistic quality of it, the way it rooted itself inside bones and nerves. It drove Ignis out of his mind—or maybe it just drove him, relentlessly bearing down on him until he felt like he was a distant party to his own body. 

To move was excruciating, but to lie still was intolerable. He couldn't stop moving, couldn't bring himself to stop pacing tight circles in the corner of the cage, hobbled by the rope around his neck. He felt like a hunted thing, agony and the fear of more agony pushing him on; when he stood still, his body wet with cold sweat, his belly would heave with deeper and deeper breaths until he lurched back into his paces again.

There was a noise to the pain, a low, grinding moan that traveled the length of his spine, from below his belly to the base of his skull. It followed him, too, scraping its way up and down his spine, shaking him the hardest when he stood still. When he was still, it would lodge itself high up in his throat, just above the rope. It would shake its way free of him as a nasal whine, droning on and on until it forced him back to his feet. 

The absence of pain was quiet and still, those fragile moments when he stood, his flanks heaving, and felt nothing at all.

x

He didn’t know how long they’d had him when they brought in the coeurl. Weeks, maybe. Long enough that they’d grown tired of raping him, but not so long that they’d grown tired of keeping him alive. He'd grown tired of being alive, though; he'd grown tired of it a long time ago.

It was a commotion when they brought the coeurl in, enough of one that, even as exhausted and apathetic as Ignis was, it still caught his attention. At first he couldn't identify exactly what it was the Crownsguard were hauling into the room, only that it was something massive, carried in a tarp. It wasn't until the Crownsguard were half of the way to the chainlink gates that Ignis noticed the tail dangling from the tarp, the tip dragging along the floor. 

He wanted to say no. 

He wanted a lot of things. He wanted to be able to travel farther than the length of the rope tied to his neck, and he wanted to lie on something than the concrete floor; he wanted to return to the Citadel and Noct, and he wanted to never see another human again; he wanted his fingertips back. All of the things he wanted seemed to be at odds with what the Crownsguard wanted. Right now he wanted to say no, and he wanted them to stop and turn around, to drag that thing in the tarp back out the door. The Crownsguard, though, just kept dragging themselves, and the tarp, and the thing, closer to Ignis's cage, grunting and heaving and cursing. 

When they reached the gate to his cage, Ignis scrambled to the back wall, jarring his knee and smacking his elbow against the floor. The hurts were secondary to the panic, huge and all-consuming, like a wave welling up beneath him. He could hear himself panting harshly, like a nervous dog or cat, a mindless beast of burden. The rope around his neck was growing tighter.

One of the Crownsguard let go of his portion of the tarp, jogging forward to unlock Ignis's cage. Ignis whined as the gate swung open—couldn't stop whining, couldn't stop himself from grabbing at the rope around his neck, pawing at it stupidly. They were coming into his cage now, the Crownsguard and the tarp, and Ignis could see the size of the coeurl's head now, could see just how much its weight strained the tarp. All the Crownsguard seemed to look over him as they dragged the coeurl into the cage, just far enough to deposit it fully inside. 

They were between Ignis and the gate—the coeurl was between Ignis and the gate—and Ignis wanted to say, _No. Stop. I need to go back, Noct is waiting for me._

(He didn't know if he was, though; maybe Noct thought that Ignis had finally reached his breaking point and had walked away. Maybe he had as much heartache as Ignis did, and maybe Ignis being gone—maybe it was easier with Ignis gone, and now—)

The Crownsguard let the coeurl come to rest on the floor, dropping the tarp and stepping back.

The flank of the coeurl was rising and falling, the steadiness of its breathign the beat of Ignis's spiraling fear, the foundation of which was the certainty that if he looked away, the coeurl would wake up. It would rise to its feet, towering over him; it would open its gaping mouth, and it would tear him apart as he screamed and fought and choked on his own blood. 

The Crownsguard were moving in the peripherals of his vision, exiting the cage, but he couldn't turn his head to watch them go, or open his mouth to ask, or beg, or promise, or offer. 

Whatever tranquilizers the Crownsguard had used on the coeurl, they weren’t enough to keep the coeurl down for long. Its flank began to heave as it breathed more deeply, its paws and tail and whiskers twitching as it began to wake.

“Hey, pussy,” someone called from outside the cage, past the periphery of his sight, “are you gonna let it fuck you?” 

Everything moved too quickly, the coeurl shaking off the effects of the tranquilizer in dizzying lurches: lying still, then clambering to its feet; staggering to one side of the cage, then the other. The coeurl didn’t seem to the notice the Crownsguard outside the cage for longer than a few seconds, grunting and snuffing as it began to pace the cage.

There was jeering and laughter outside the cage, but Ignis was too panicked to understand the words. He needed to get out of the cage, he needed to run; he needed to slip the rope collar around his neck. 

The coeurl turned around, pacing back across the cage. Its mouth was open, red and wet and gaping, and he could hear it breathing in with short, quick huffs. It came close to him, shaking its head and shoulders only a few feet from him, and Ignis flinched when its whiskers crackled close to his body, flattening himself back against the chainlink. 

The coeurl paced another circuit around the cage, breathing those short bursts through its mouth. It was still shaking its head, the tips of its whiskers throwing off sparks. Ignis clenched his eyes shut when the coeurl pushed close, choking back the urge to scream or thrash when it shoved its enormous head against his body. It was still huffing open mouthed, its breath hot and wet against Ignis’s bare skin, and when it pressed closer, Ignis could feel its mouth span the width and height of his belly, its teeth cool and damp as they brushed his skin. 

He kept his eyes closed, curling his arms over his head, as the coeurl dipped its muzzle lower, snuffing at Ignis’s cock. He couldn’t hold back a whimper when the coeurl shoved its head between his thighs, forcing them apart, and he could feel his body grow cold, his lungs tight and breathless, when the coeurl grunted, its teeth grazing the delicate skin of Ignis’s thighs and genitals.

The coeurl lifted its head, nudged its muzzle against the underside of Ignis’s genitals, and Ignis felt bottom of his stomach begin to plummet. The coeurl nudged again, harder this time, and Ignis let himself be tipped over, sprawling onto his belly. The muzzle pressed against Ignis again, and Ignis’s stomach turned off nauseatingly as coeurl licked between his thighs.

There was an ache, too, running along the tops of his thighs and small of his back. It was hot and golden and syrupy, twisting up inside him, and he curled his arms tighter over his head, trying to ignore the brush of fur against his arse and thigh as his tail shifted to the side. When the coeurl crouched over him, its mouth hanging over his head and its belly arched over him, Ignis turned his face against his arm, trying to muffle a sob.

The coeurl’s penis was hot and sticky, and when it slide against Ignis’s arse and lower back, Ignis wanted to die. The coeurl was grumbling, its mouth open and its lips curled back as it began to hunch itself further, trying to mount him. Ignis shoved his face harder against his arm, closing his eyes again. He didn’t want to see, or hear, or feel. He didn’t want any of this. 

He had to bite into his arm when the coeurl tried to step a hind leg tighter to him; its paw gouged his side, its claws digging into and dragging down his flank. The coeurl grumbled again, louder and closer to the back of his head, and its hind paw tore into Ignis’s side when it tried to reposition itself again, still hunching too high for its penis to hit anything other than Ignis’s back. 

He was sobbing now, couldn’t stop it. The coeurl was beginning to growl, sounding anxious, and when its next thrust pushed its penis along Ignis’s back again, it snapped its teeth next to Ignis’s shoulder, its incisors catching and tearing Ignis’s skin. Pain and terror had Ignis struggling to get his feet underneath so he could push his arse up as high as he could. The coeurl snapped its teeth next to his shoulder again, catching Ignis’s skin again.

This time when the coeurl hunched over him, the fur of its belly and chest rubbed against Ignis’s back. Its whiskers were crackling, the electrical sparks stinging and blistering his skin. He felt the coeurl’s penis bump against him, just to the side, and he couldn’t stop the whine in his throat. The coeurl stepped again, a hind paw clawing up Ignis’s calf, and hunched over him.

Its penis nudged up against him, and the tip slid into him, wedging itself into him. It was too big, it was too much, and when the coeurl shoved itself in further, trying to mount him, Ignis panicked, struggling and scrabbling to get away. The coeurl snarled, biting down and holding Ignis’s neck and head, its teeth sinking in as it thrust deeper into Ignis’s body.

There was blood in his throat, building up in his mouth, and he felt air bubble through his throat. Seafoam. Froth. He heard a gurgle from deep in his throat, and he felt the pop of air in the back of his throat. He was drowning, his throat torn open and left exposed, blood pouring down into his lungs. The coeurl growled around his head, its teeth vibrating in his throat and skull. The rumble of its chest, of its open mouth, enveloped him and shook him like a piece of shale in a metal pail.

Ignis groaned, or cried, or screamed, but there wasn’t any air left in his lungs; it was all trapped in his throat, all turned to seafoam. He could feel his bones shatter like flint, turning to sharp splinters. The coeurl growled again, its breath hot and thick and furnace-like around Ignis’s head, and when it pulled its penis free, Ignis felt himself tear in half.


End file.
